Individuals attending an event or on a vacation often wish to obtain professional images of the event or special activities if professional images are available. As used herein, the term “event” may mean a single activity or multiple activities over the course of one or more days and the term “sub-event” means a single activity that is part of an event. For instance, a cruise is an event and embarking, disembarking, a formal dinner, and a dance related to the cruise are sub-events. An event may also refer to a charity event, a sporting event, a social event, a business event, a vacation event, or any other event where attendees may desire professional photographs. Theme parks similarly provide photographers associated with specific rides or attractions or are located throughout the park to take photographs of individuals, families, or groups of people. Event holders, such as a cruise line, often offer for sale photos of the attendees by displaying images taken at the event in a centralized location with the hope that one or more attendees will review and purchase one or more photographs. The event holder may offer this service through its own staff or through a third party. The purchased photographs are then provided to the customer immediately or later, for example, by delivery to the customer's room. One advantage of such a system is that finished products are placed in the hands of potential customers, which has been found to facilitate sales. This method of operation—taking a photo, editing and printing the photo, displaying the photo in a gallery and offering that photo for sale has been employed for a number of years. One of skill in the art will appreciate that this method of selling photographs, however, is associated with an increased time and cost burden related to providing, editing and displaying photos that may never be purchased.
Photographs not purchased are discarded which is wasteful and environmentally unsound. Some event holders have attempted to reduce this waste by providing one or more viewing terminals that allow potential customers to review digital versions of the images. The terminals often become crowded as many individuals want to see their photos at or about the same time, for example, during or following a sub-event such as a formal dinner. Digital files also take time to locate or access and upload for immediate printing and purchase. This can lead to delays and customer frustration.
Another known method involves selling the rights to images prior to an event or to offer photos electronically for purchase during or post event. Instead of the event holder or photographer maintaining exclusive possession and control over the digital versions of the images, the images may be stored on a portable storage media like a CD, DVD, memory card or thumb drive and are provided at a cost to the customer. The system allows the customer to use, copy, and modify the purchased images. The drawback of this method is minimal interaction between the event holder and/or photographer and the customer. Thus, opportunities to sell related collateral items, such as calendars, coffee mugs, tee shirts, etc. that incorporate the images, are reduced, or lost to the event holder or photographer. As used herein, the terms “image-related items” and “image-related products” are used synonymously with the term “related collateral items”.
One other disadvantage of the prior art method is that its effectiveness is a function of the size and length of the event. Simply put, the amount of photos associated with an event is directly proportional to the number of attendees and the length of the event. For example, very large cruise ships hold thousands of passengers and extend for days and sometimes weeks. Thus the quantity of displayed photos increases dramatically. It follows that the time it takes for potential customers to find and review their photos will increase which translates to crowding. Increased crowds often lead to customer frustration and could lead to lost sales. To make matters worse, the event hosts will often condense and consolidate older photographs, which makes finding a particular photo difficult for those potential customers who may wait until near the end of the event to review photos for potential purchase.
Another disadvantage with existing display systems is that they do not offer related collateral items, such as photo CD's, books, post cards, calendars etc. These items must be ordered. Some attendees may not think to order or have the patience to construct and order image-related items. Thus, it would be beneficial to offer image-related products for the same reasons articulated above—placing finished products in a potential customer's hands tends to facilitate sales.
Thus, there is a long felt need to provide an image display system that enhances customer access to their images, facilitates increased access to images by a large number of potential customers simultaneously, and facilitates purchase of image-related items by potential customers at the same time.